Woo! New year, new start, keeping up… not bad not bad. I don’t do resolutions, just gradually change my patterns. So here’s hoping.

Anyway… December, last month… well… Christmas, of course. Winter, some snow (sort of), busy busy. But now for the actual details of the month…

We had our traditional paper chain countdown, perler bead Advent chart AND of course, went to Activity Village for their Advent fun. Just a warning – they have gone to membership now, it is a reasonable cost and I have already signed up.

Early on in the month Shandai and I gave it a go at a Vendor sale and set up a table of my crochet and her knitting pieces. It wasn’t a huge success but it was fun! And hopefully something we can do again!

A pretty view out the back of the building

We did all sorts of fun crafts at home and at Daycare.

You really can make any picture Christmas-y

Practiced our recorders.

Christmas with the Schwartz family is a yearly much looked forward to tradition. Of course we decorated our small gingerbread houses.

Our last weekend before Christmas had us with one more day of “real” school. AND seeing that Saturday was the first day of winter, a return of more snow and some cooler temperatures.

In our Gammie packages there was a craft kit so how better to end the last full week before Christmas than to get to work making Santas? And when we ran out of beards… elves.

More books of course.

We greatly enjoyed our read by Gammie story!

And then Ken and Nana executed Trinity and my idea of a box puppet house. Activity Village (link on right) put up a previous Advent’s printable Christmas people pages and so we printed those out and put them on popsicle sticks for our puppets. Supplemented by any finger puppets we found laying around.

Ken had registered the kids for a special Christmas Home Depot craft – snowmen made out of paving stones. VERY cute!!!

Sunday was the last scheduled Sunday School session until after the New Year. Miss Trinity wore last year’s finery and looked absolutely adorable. Our family and only a handful more kids were there but they had a blast. And came home with chocolate for all.

We rounded off our morning with cookie making and decorating! So many sweets in the house right now!

There was a reason for the last minute icing. Our afternoon/evening Sunday was our Novak/Reinsch-Johnson Christmas gathering over at the Novak’s. Talk about excitement and chaos… it was PERFECT! We had supper and snacks (oh the variety of snacks including our cookies) and games and visiting. Definitely an amazing way to spend Christmas with friends who are so much more than just friends. Chosen family!

We were there super late and drove home in somewhat nasty weather with kids who were full of Christmas cheer and exhaustion. Now enjoy the rest of the party pictures!!!

Christmas colouring

More present opening

Alex the musician

DINNER

Godson and I

Action hair

Fishing for words

Hanging out

A room of artists

The first 3 were made by me, I am not sure where Aidan’s is (I think he keeps it in his room) but I have cross stitched stockings for all the Novak boys.